What a website (and not even a visit) cannot tell you
Here’s the thing about the first initial venue: it wasn’t a bad place at all ! It was actually a beautiful property.
They had visited, walked the grounds, seen the spaces, talked with the manager, tasted the food and genuinely loved it, immensely
The problem was something that hadn’t been considered by anyone involved, including the villa’s own team, cause they cannot know all your vision my loves, it’s part of an upper layer of work they are not involved in
The property is a Villa yes, but an hotel Villa in Florence
Being not only a wedding venue, if it’s not booked in exclusive use, which was something Helen&Matt were not interested into, andhaving guests in rooms that have nothing to do with their wedding.. things were not fully smooth
Logically this meant the curfew wasn’t arbitrary or negotiable, guests of the hotel had the right to sleep with no hard party going on, of course
Was this clear to Helen & Matt? No
No one had flagged this. Not the couple, because they didn’t know what questions to ask. Not the villa’s manager either, because, and this is something couples need to be aware of, venue managers are not wedding planners.
They know their property, but they don’t know you, your vision, your project and your possible next steps
The curfew would have cut the evening at exactly the wrong moment.
But there was more
When talking with Helen&Matt about the Villa contingency plan for bad weather (which is a non-negotiable topic as yes my loves it can rain even in summer in Tuscany) there was an indoor plan and it wasn’t vague, it was (it is) a beautiful one, but not big enough for the number of guests they were inviting
And as the venue was not supposed to be booked from the couple in exclusive use, the main lawn could not hosted a big tent
No way to create what they needed if the sky didn’t cooperate
Again: not the villa’s fault
Simply the vision and needs weren’t matching with what the venue would have included in the contract for them
As I was going through these details with the couple, a thought kept surfacing: how had all of this gone unnoticed?
How had they gotten to the contract stage without any of this surfacing?
The answer is the one I keep coming back to in this work. They trusted the process, the way most couples do.
They visited, they asked questions, they got answers.
Period.
But the questions a couple knows to ask are limited by what a couple already know, which is counterintuitive, but so true.
And a venue manager, however professional and well-intentioned, cannot fill that gap.
That’s not their job. It’s mine.
